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AbstractExisting literature on China's urbanization focuses primarily on the expansion of cities and towns, with little attention being paid to urban renewals. The wasteful use of urban land has conventionally been attributed to the ambiguous definition and ineffective protection of property rights. This study examines recent practices in urban redevelopment in Guangzhou – a site chosen by the central authorities to pilot urban renewals (sanjiu gaizao). The research identifies a local practice in which institutional changes are made not in the delineation of land property rights but instead in the redistribution of the benefits to be made from land redevelopment. Current users of the land are offered a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state as an incentive to encourage them to engage in urban renewal. Land-use intensity and efficiency have increased, along with social exclusion and marginalization. Research findings cast doubt over the perceived notion that the uniform and unambiguous definition of property rights is the prerequisite for improved land-use efficiency and call for a critical evaluation of the current urban renewal policies that completely ignore the interests of the migrant population who outnumber local residents by a large margin.

Intro -- Contents -- Tables, Maps, and Figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- Part 1: National Context -- 2 The Operating System of Spatial Transformation -- 3 Maoist Plan-Ideological Space -- 4 Post-Mao Market-Regulatory Space -- Part 2: Development of the Pearl River Delta -- 5 Economic and Spatial Transformation -- 6 Rural Industrialization -- 7 Transport Development -- 8 Influence of Hong Kong -- 9 Conclusion -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z.

Existing literature on China's urbanization focuses primarily on the expansion of cities and towns, with little attention being paid to urban renewals. The wasteful use of urban land has conventionally been attributed to the ambiguous definition and ineffective protection of property rights. This study examines recent practices in urban redevelopment in Guangzhou - a site chosen by the central authorities to pilot urban renewals (sanjiu gaizao). The research identifies a local practice in which institutional changes are made not in the delineation of land property rights but instead in the redistribution of the benefits to be made from land redevelopment. Current users of the land are offered a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state as an incentive to encourage them to engage in urban renewal. Land-use intensity and efficiency have increased, along with social exclusion and marginalization. Research findings cast doubt over the perceived notion that the uniform and unambiguous definition of property rights is the prerequisite for improved land-use efficiency and call for a critical evaluation of the current urban renewal policies that completely ignore the interests of the migrant population who outnumber local residents by a large margin. (China Q/GIGA)

Prevailing theories of uneven development see the growth of cities and regions as the spatial outcome of either the functioning of intrinsic agglomeration economies or the intrusion of global neoliberal market forces. Emphasis is placed on human resources and technology with land and capital usually taken for granted. This study of the growth of two leading Chinese metropolises—Beijing and Guangzhou—identifies a distinct strategy of urbanization financed by land commodification and actively pursued by Chinese municipal governments to contest with state power reshuffling in the era of neoliberalization. Contrary to popular notions, land commodification, rather than human capital or advanced technology, has played a role instrumental to the growth and transformation of China's metropolises. The popular practice of landed urbanization owes its political origins more to domestic state power reshuffling than to the intrusion of the global neoliberal agenda. State and market do not function as two diametrically opposing and self-contained entities but are characterized by their diverse and conflictual internal dynamics. Local states are found to have embraced and manipulated market forces for their political agenda. Theorization of global urbanism needs to go beyond the Euro-American comfort zone and to take seriously alternative practices and struggles found in the Global South.

This article examines the relationship between urban land development and municipal finance in a Chinese regional economy undergoing rapid urbanization. Drawing upon insights from the perspective of political economy, this article identifies a strategy by which land-centered urbanization has been actively pursued as a means of revenue generation in response to the reshuffling of state power. The territorialization of state power is realized through the expansion of urban space into the rural vicinity and the conversion of rural land into high-valued urban development to a greater regional extent. In contrast to the urbanization of capital observed in the global North, where an overaccumulation of capital leads to a sequential switch of the circuits of capital, urbanization in China has been pursued as a strategy to mobilize and accumulate original capital. Contrary to conventional wisdom, urbanization has not been an outcome responsive to economic growth; instead, it has been an active driving force instrumental to regional transformation. This article calls for greater attention to be directed to the interrelationship between land development, local public finance, and urbanization in the ongoing transformation of the Chinese political economy.

China's spaces of urbanisation in the 1980s and early 1990s were occupied primarily by the interests of rural industrialisation and town development. Since the mid 1990s, China's urban spaces have been reproduced through a city-based and land-centred process of urbanisation in which large cities managed to reassert their leading positions in an increasingly competitive, globalising and urbanising economy. This study analyses changes in China's nonagricultural land in relation to the growth and structural changes of Chinese cities. A systematic analysis of three sets of data reveals a high intensity and great unevenness of non-agricultural land use in the country. China had 29.5 million hectares of non-agricultural land in 1996, which accounted for only 3 per cent of the national land mass. Over 80 per cent of the recent increase in non-agricultural land use was caused by the expansion of urban and rural settlements, industrialisation and numerous 'development zones'. A comparative analysis of land use data and Landsat images identifies two concurrent processes of urbanisation and non-agricultural land use change. Rapid urban sprawl of large cities, driven by the expansion of ring-roads and setting up of 'development zones', has contributed to the conversion of farmland into nonagricultural uses. At the same time, rural industrialisation and a housing boom have given rise to a dispersed pattern of non-agricultural land development all over the country. Given the pervasive influence of the forces of continuing urbanisation and globalisation, the state's attempt to protect China's dwindling farmland will not reverse the trend of increasing non-agricultural land use, but are likely to slow the pace of land conversion. Anecdotal evidence such as 'hollow villages' and idle land in numerous encircled 'development zones' suggests that there exist ways for China to use its non-agricultural land more efficiently and economically than hitherto.

Lin reviews TRANSFORMING RURAL CHINA: How Local Institutions Shape Property Rights in China by Chih-jou Jay Chen.